Iraq: 9,000 More Die in 2008

9,028. That’s the number of Iraqi civilians killed this year in war, according to a new report by Iraq Body Count.
In case anyone thinks that’s “residual violence” or, worse still,  “the irreducible minimum”, let me put it in perspective:
Even if, despite all the predictions to the contrary, civilian deaths remain at present level for the [...]

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Iraq: A Lose-Lose with SOFA?

Before signing off for Christmas, I’d like to draw your attention (via Abu Aardvark) to this interesting new briefing from USIP.
The paper, written by Daniel P. Serwer and Sam Parker and titled Iraq in the Obama Administration, offers several worthwile recommendations to the inbound president on how to navigate the morass of Iraq. One in [...]

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Afghanistan: U.S. Plans Another Layer of Violence

Remember that funny word ‘DDR’? It stood for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. In Afghanistan, it was a program to demilitarise the society after almost 30 years of war. The premise, if you will, was that weapons beget violence; that violence undermines the state; and that the first step towards peace is, therefore, to remove weapons [...]

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Bush in Baghdad: The Other Shoe Drops

So this is how it ends. President George W. Bush, who probably couldn’t resist looking for that grand square named after him in Baghdad, was greeted with two flying shoes instead.
I completely agree with The Angry Arab that this would be humiliating in any culture. I’d hate to have it happen to me. And just [...]

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Shoe-Tossing ‘Never Would Have Happened Under Saddam’

My favourite flying-shoe quote, from an Iraqi warrant officer interviewed by Wired’s Nathan Hodge:
‘This never would have happened in the time of Saddam. If that had happened, he would be executed straight away. They would chop him into a million pieces. Saddam would kill his cousins, his uncles, all his relatives.’

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Iraq: A Footprint Not So Light

Judah Grunstein, writing at WPR, makes an important semantic point about U.S. military operations in Iraq:
[...] It’s worth pointing out that despite the emphasis placed on a light fingerprint in the COIN tactics that guided the Surge, ‘light’ is used in comparison to war zone environments. What we call the ’security gains’ in Iraq come [...]

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Giustozzi: Afghan Insurgents Number in ‘Tens of Thousands’

Echoing the recent ICOS report, Taleban expert Antonio Giustozzi offers a worrying year-end summary of the troubles facing the international coalition in Afghanistan:

The number of rebels is growing steadily and must now range in the tens of thousands.
The insurgents show signs of improving their tactical skills.
The Taliban in particular are also having some success in [...]

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From Bad Apples to Rotten Trees: Senate Blames Rumsfeld

There is little in the new Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse that we didn’t already know. Still, when a bi-partisan report, co-released by Carl Levin and John McCain, says that top administration officials were responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners in Gitmo, Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s… kind of breathtaking:
Conclusion 1: On February [...]

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Lashkar-e-Taiba: The Next al-Qaeda

Here’s a new brand name the next U.S. president will have to try and wrap his tongue around: Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Not only did LeT apparently train the Mumbai attackers, but, according to a United Nations document scooped by McClatchy, the group has “sent operatives to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, established a branch in Saudi Arabia and [...]

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Pentagon IG: Military Saw IED Threat, Did Nothing

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 without the military “having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines”, according to a report by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general:
Even after the war was under way, as the devices began taking a deadly toll and field [...]

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